Stockholm, Sweden: Paul Krugman, whose
relentless criticism of the Bush
administration includes opposition to
the $700 bn financial bailout, won the Nobel Prize
in Economics for his work on International Trade Patterns. The Princeton University Professor
and New York Times columnist is the
best-known American Economist to win the prize in
decades. The Nobel committee commended Krugman's work on global trade, beginning with a
10-page paper in 1979 that knit together two fields
of study, helping Foster to better understand why countries produce similar products and
why people move from the small towns to cities.
Krugman (pronounced kroog-man) is best- known for his unabashedly liberal column in
the Times, Of course, if writing newspaper
columns merited Nobel Prizes, than there would have
been many more. But Prof. Krugman is also amongst
the most eminent academic economists in the US. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in
1991, the 23rd winner of an award that is given
every alternate year to an American Economist under
the age of 40. Twelve of the first 23 have gone on
to win Nobel Prizes, making it look like a
virtually necessary condition for an American to become
a Nobel Laureate. The prize announcement cites his research on the parallel domains of
international trade and economic geography, which he
was instrumental in bringing together to explain patterns of both trade and location of
economic activities, which the traditional trade theory
had failed to do.
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